"I am delighted to be part of the ______. Rarely there is an opportunity to play new formats on the Tour, and the event in ____ offers a whole new experience for players, fans and TV viewers," explained Bernd Wiesberger in a press release last week. What do you think he was talking about? The cash-up-front LIV Golf opener for which a former world number one has been humiliatingly called in to try and get rid of some free tickets? Or the Scandinavian Mixed, where men and women will compete in the same event, on the same course, for the same money?
How stark a contrast, and how unfortunate that Wiesberger – who has shown a reluctance to experiment in the past – could not have found something better to say, or said nothing at all. The Austrian, so likeable in so many ways, has of course chosen to take money which doesn't really come from LIV Golf, nor even from the so-called Public Investment Fund, but from the Saudi royal family. He had two formats to choose from this week, and has gone with the least experimental, the least progressive, but by far the most lucrative.
Wiesberger, 36, perhaps isn't allowed to make his confession: that with just over €15m in European Tour earnings and without a PGA Tour card to complicate things further, he feels he cannot pass up the golden ticket offered by LIV, however stained in blood it may be. That is his prerogative and there are many who will support not just his freedom of choice, but the logic in his decision. If only they, like Wiesberger and his maladroit PR team, would find it as easy to pick from one of the following two options: defend it in good faith, or not at all.
And so to those who are in Halmstad for this fabulous event. We shouldn't kid ourselves into believing that there are none who would rather be earning much more in Hemel Hempstead, but for now they are here, and they'll be involved in something special. Golf has been and remains a sport undermined by inequality, and anything which attempts to change that must be celebrated – whether it's , , , or these early signs of progress among the most powerful tours in the sport.
Last year's inaugural edition provided a thrilling finish, Jonathan Caldwell posting a clubhouse target which Adrian Otaegui clumsily failed to match. Noticeable come the end of the event was an absence of LET players on the leaderboard, Alice Hewson in third the only female member of the top nine, with just two among the top 17. That suggests an imbalance, either in course set-up, strength of the respective challenges, or perhaps even the added pressure LET players faced. Caldwell winning wasn't a particularly big story, but when a female player wins this tournament, it will be.
It's difficult to get a firm handle on any measures taken to avoid a repeat, but last year's leaderboard was in keeping with similar events held previously. When the Vic Open was played across two courses in Australia, scoring in separate men's and women's tournaments was very different: the men's were won in 19-under and 18-under, the women's in eight-under. In the 2019 Jordan Mixed Open, which also featured senior male players, one Ladies European Tour member made the top 15, albeit she very nearly won.
Unlike Noren, Stenson hasn't had to fly in from the USA as he featured in last week's Porsche European Open. Finishing 34th was a solid effort on balance, especially given that he needed to birdie his final hole on Friday to make the cut, instead making a brilliant eagle before embarking upon a quiet weekend climb.
Once more, this performance was built on solid foundations as he was accurate off the tee (11th) and produced good approach play figures, ranking 30th in a week where the bare numbers themselves are very volatile. One bad swing at the wrong time at Green Eagle, which Stenson produced on a couple of occasions, and water makes for a big loss in strokes-gained terms. For the most part he was much better than that.
Kinhult has done extraordinarily well to get his career back on track having been diagnosed with epilepsy last spring. Following three months away he struggled for most of 2021 until signing off the season with a round of 64, and then getting back to work as he adjusts to the new challenges he's now facing.
Reward came in low-key fashion with a return to the Nordic Golf League in February, winning one of two events held in Spain, and he showed the benefits of that when eighth in Kenya and third in Qatar as the DP World Tour returned from its latest mini-break.
However, his win by the coast in Sicily came on the back of a similar return to form, and in 2020 he produced back-to-back top-five finishes seemingly out of the blue. In 2019 he managed three top-10s in six starts, the first of them in the Scandinavian Invitation, and he played really well a week after losing a play-off in Qatar five years ago.
In fairness to the Aussie, he's one of those who hasn't had many chances to win and has instead found himself on the periphery of things all too often, but that wasn't the case in this event last year. For the first time in his DP World Tour career, Scrivener shared the 54-hole lead, and after an eagle at the sixth hole he was in command of the tournament, only to play the remaining 12 in five-over to lose out by six.
How he'll fare if such a chance arises again we'll have to see, but having opened 69-63 on his previous start in Sweden and also placed in the Made In Denmark last year, he should relish a return to these parts and to the style of golf he prefers. It's certainly a more suitable course on paper than Green Eagle, the monster upon which he improved to finish 25th last week, having been well down the field on his previous visit.
Scrivener's performance in Germany represented a continuation of the form he's shown for much of spring, and but for one shot in the Dutch Open he'd be on a run of 10 cuts made in succession. Throughout this sequence he's produced quality iron play, his driving last week was as good as it ever is, and it's fair to expect his putting malaise to end soon as that club has been among his most reliable down the years.
In this company, he'd look a solid runner wherever the tournament was being held. That it's in Sweden, on a shorter course which is by the sea, only increases his chance and of all this week's selections, I'll be most disappointed if Scrivener doesn't play really well.
Ashley Chesters is a late entrant who will love the look of this place and as the most accurate driver on the circuit is respected, with Matthew Southgate and Shubhankar Sharma others to note at nice prices.
Next for me though is DAAN HUIZING, an underachiever who might just kick on following his first DP World Tour top-10 last week.
A one-time amateur star on this side of the Atlantic, Huizing has proven a class act on the Challenge Tour but hadn't really bridged the divide until last week, where he stuck around throughout on a course which is longer than he'd like.
Previous standout performances came in events won by Catlin, Dave Horsey and Raphael Jacquelin, three short, accurate types, and that's Huizing's game, too. It's why I expect he'll prefer Halmstad to say the far bigger, more modern PGA Sweden National, which is where he made his only previous appearance in Sweden at this level and still fared well for a time.
Still just 25, Paratore is a two-time DP World Tour winner, first holding off Fitzpatrick, Olesen and a host of other classy types to win here in Sweden, and then taking the first full event back in the summer of 2020, the British Masters, at the expense of Rasmus Hojgaard.
Since then, this wild driver has generally struggled and already in 2022, he's missed 10 cuts, the only exception when 40th in Kenya and that thanks to a red-hot putter. This explains why he's as big as 300/1 and there's a good chance he spends far too long in the trees to do much better here.
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